| | | The structure of URLs |
To navigate the World-Wide Web, you need to know the basics of Uniform Resource Locators (URLs). Here are some examples of different types of URLs. Try clicking on them.
This is a standard World-Wide Web address. The https stands for
Hyper Text Transport Protocol.
Here ftp stands for File Transport Protocol.
This is a special URL that calls up the indicated newsgroup. (The machine running your World-Wide Web browser must have a connection to a news server for this to work.)
This is another special URL. If the Web browser supports it, this URL pops up a "Compose Mail" window.
This shows a list of the files and subdirectories in the root directory of the computer running the World-Wide Web browser, assuming that you have permission to read them. (If you try to access a file that you do not have permission to read, you will get an error message.) Thus, you can use any World-Wide Web browser as a file and directory browser too. Some operating systems integrate the Web browser with the file browser in a transparent way (for instance, current versions of KDE under Linux do this, and so does Microsoft's operating system).
In general, a URL has the form
protocol://machine-name/path. Normally the path should
end with a slash / if it is a directory, but it should
not end with a slash if it is an ordinary file.
RFC1738 and RFC1808 specify the detailed structure of URLs, and RFC2396 describes the more general notion of a Uniform Resource Identifier (URI).
The Math 696 course
pages were last modified April 5, 2005. | | | The structure of URLs |